It's been two months, as we end November, since I started to include more Raw Food in my diet. It's also been now seven months since I began to make daily bento for both Boyfriend and myself.
I've been doing a lot of talking about weight with my friends lately. I suppose it's just the natural course of things in America, with this time of year being the absolute worst food consumption days combined with the most pressure and despair. The end of the year is coming, and with it, my own personal goal of reaching 120lbs again.
Anyone who has known me for any real length of time where I was at some point or another under pressure or stress knows that I maintain that I will gain weight during this time, even if I'm not eating much at all. My body just doesn't process the food properly, and I think it misinterprets the mental stress as physical distress. In any case, I put on the pounds weekly.
I've never been under as much pressure as I have put on myself these past few months studying for the JLPT 3, a level that is almost beyond my reach if only because of how far behind I am in reading and writing. I take the test this Sunday, and I can tell you right now that the thought of it makes me get dizzy. This is stress and panic at its worst.
I'm not gaining weight. For the first time in my entire life, I'm not gaining weight. I'm not exactly losing weight either, but I'm not gaining. It's the holidays and I'm stressed out to the max, and I'm not putting on weight.
There are two combined explanations for this "miracle" of mine: smoothies and portion control. With the increase in time I've spent doing other things, I've been completely unable to do more than the minimum with Raw Food. I did get an exciting new book, and that's given me some great new ideas for changing things, but I just haven't been able to do much at all. All I've been able to keep doing is the smoothies in the morning, and of course, the bentos for lunch. Dinner has been made on the fly, with about 95% of it cooked, if not 100%.
The latest in smoothies for me is trying out these nut+fruit smoothies. These recipes came from the new book, though I haven't actually done any one of the recipes exactly. I used the fruit I had and of course didn't add in the things I didn't have. This morning was a fantastic smoothie, and very filling. I like these better because of the smooth and creamy texture that gives a nice fulfilling feeling. Todays was my own creation:
2 cups raw organic Almond Milk
1 tbsp carob powder
1 mango
2 cups of sliced frozen organic peaches
That's it. I blended it very well, in stages so as not to overheat it, and it came out very rich and thick, like a milkshake. The carob powder makes it look like chocolate, and kind of smell like chocolate, but it doesn't taste like chocolate. This is okay--the taste of the carob powder is, at least to us, a pleasant taste. But, as I've mentioned before, I don't follow that believe that I should be telling you that it's a substitute for chocolate that tastes just like it. It doesn't. This doesn't mean it doesn't taste GOOD. But, if you're expecting "chocolate" and you get "not chocolate" your brain can say, "Then this is bad/gross/etc." Don't go into it thinking that it'll be exactly the same. Almond milk plus carob powder is not going to be like milk plus cacao powder. Period, end of story. It doesn't mean that you won't like the almond milk and carob powder just as much if not better though. Personally, I don't like chocolate flavored things because I feel it comes out tasting more like chalk dust than chocolate truffles. So, I'm happy with the carob powder. If you don't like it, you don't have to use it.
The second part of this "miracle" diet is that I provide a bento. For those who have never heard of bento, I suggest typing it into a search engine and checking out the results. In Japanese culture, it's as well known as the phrase "brown bag" or "lunch box" or such, and it means pretty much that. It's a type of packed food (often lunch) wherein food is packed closely together into a container. That's all there is to it. Some people go out of their way to make it ornate, or pretty, like http://www.mybentolicious.com/ but others focus on the more practical bento, like the kind that I usually make, such as from the http://justbento.com/handbook/lists archives.
The most significant point of the bentos is that it controls your portion. In our world, where portions are exceedingly large, this is even more important in many ways that what you eat. Just getting yourself to eat about 600ml of food for lunch and finding this to be a satisfying portion is a challenge at first. When I first started bento in the summer, 14lbs ago, I was basically hungry after every single bento. I wanted more food, even if I'd had filling food, because my stomach was used to much larger portions.
People talk about "shrinking their stomach" or even the very dramatic surgery of "stapling" the stomach to physically reduce the size of food they consume. You can think of bentos as a way of "stapling" your stomach in a non-invasive surgery way. There comes a point when it doesn't matter that you're eating healthier food. In fact, even in Raw Foods you can go wrong by eating too much of the wrong things, or too many high calorie foods that aren't filling enough. "Too much of a good thing" goes very far in both healthy and Raw Food philosophy.
You shouldn't be hungry all of the time. Most people who have gone on a diet like that know that eventually you get tired of being hungry all the time and gorge yourself on food. But, sometimes, if you keep eating until you feel full, you just can't lose weight. Sometimes, you can't even maintain weight. Doing something like packing a lunch, or packing a dinner, or even packing a breakfast--even if you never leave the home--makes it a lot easier to start making sure you're eating a reasonable amount of food. You also pay a lot more attention to what kind of variety of food you're getting in something like a bento. The focus of bento is on small portions with regards to color, texture, and nutrition.
Also, different people have different needs. I, who spend a lot more of my time on the computer or at a table working on something, just don't need as much food for lunch as someone who is doing a lot more activity. For me, a 550ml to 650ml container is enough. For Boyfriend, who is bigger and a male, he eats anywhere from 800ml to 900ml. With bentos, if you pack it in the exact ratio of carbs to vegetables to protein, you get around the same amount of calories per ml in the container. Sometimes we hit around that, other times it's less, and sometimes it's more. It's a rough estimate, but it's not just calories that concern me, but how much food goes in.
These days, I am full after every bento, and after every smoothie. I know I'm in a good place when I just can't finish something like a Carl's Jr "combo meal" or a 2-item combo from Panda Express because it's just too much food.
These are the two guiding principles of my "miracle" diet that is making it so I don't gain weight, and so I can get closer and closer to my goals. Like all the best "diets" this isn't a "diet" like what you go on to get in shape for a wedding and then go off; this is a lifestyle, a way of living that has nothing to do with stopping and starting things. This is how I live.
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